


The Brands We Carry

by AdvisedPanic



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 13 years difference but it is no relationship when either are underage, Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Canon Divergence, Canon character deaths, Cheating, Drowning, Drug Use, F/M, Grief, M/M, Soul Brands, Soulmates AU, Stephen and Tony are soulmates, babeyy, child death - off screen, the cheating is minor but present, they don't meet for a while yall, tony and pepper are married when they meet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 20:09:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20711816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdvisedPanic/pseuds/AdvisedPanic
Summary: Tony Stark is almost thirteen years old when he gets ready to settle down to bed one early-early-morning and happens to look in the mirror on his childhood wall and catches sight of a circular brand on the skin above his heart.“About fucking time,” Tony mutters, and goes to sleep without bothering to tell anybody he just cussed out a baby that’s only just crying its way into its new life somewhere on the planet.The date is February 17, 1983. Happy birthday, whoever you are. Took you long enough.*Or: Tony Stark and Stephen Strange are soulmates. You'd think that would mean they would be perfect for each other right from the start, but it turns out that their soulbond is a long path of mutual distrust, dislike, and miscommunication.  Just their luck.





	The Brands We Carry

**Author's Note:**

> hey yall!!
> 
> back at it again so soon. here's my second and final entry from the 2018 MTH auction! This lovely soulmate piece was won and requested by MeganeDoodleDog on tumblr. Here's to you!!
> 
> this is my first real crack at traditional soulmate AU. it's nothing drastically different, but this is a take that does blend fate/predestination with resistance of it, plus the nature of choice and everything. That and the fact that neither of them really get along for a LONG while and what that looks like when you're soulmates but, you know, not yet because you're not the person you're meant to be.
> 
> in any case, trigger warnings: canon typical violence, minor character death (off screen; canon deaths), child death (off screen), drug/alcohol use, drowning, cheating (kissing only), and marriage annulment. if i've missed something or labelled one incorrectly, please let me know!!
> 
> thanks for reading! i hope you enjoy xx

Tony Stark is born blank.

This is not an uncommon occurrence. To be precise, it happens to one out of every one point six people; one out of every two-ish babies born across the globe doesn’t have a brand somewhere on their splotched baby body. One soulmate has to be born first after all, right? 

Tony Stark grows up blank. 

This is also not an uncommon occurrence. A majority of children (72%) below the age of five remain blank, studiously and virginly unmarked, and it just so happens that Tony Stark, the heir to the Stark fortune and business, is one of the majority. One soulmate has to be older than the other after all, right? Right.

Tony Stark grows up and stays blank.

This is...atypical, but not impossible. The largest age gap between confirmed soulmates is thirty-four years; a mother who lost everything tied to a newborn baby who lost everything, too. Platonic or parental soulmates aside, though, the statistics cease to favor Tony. Romantic—or typical—soulmates have an average gap of six years. Tony Stark turns nine and he is still blank. And then he turns ten. And then eleven. Twelve.

It’s at this point there are whispered conversations between the Stark parents that maybe their little son has an unrequited soulmate; that his soulmate bares his mark, but he does not bare theirs. It’s more and more common in the ever growing industrial world.

Tony Stark is almost thirteen years old when he gets ready to settle down to bed one early-early-morning and happens to look in the mirror on his childhood wall and catches sight of a circular brand on the skin above his heart. It’s some nonsensical circle with arcing lines through it, nothing familiar about it.

“About fucking time,” Tony mutters, and goes to sleep without bothering to tell anybody he just cussed out a baby that’s only just crying its way into its new life somewhere on the planet.

The date is February 17, 1983. Happy birthday, whoever you are. Took you long enough.

*

The new soulmate bond is..._ weird_. Usually, you’re young enough that by the time you’re aware of it it’s just natural, like beauty marks—nothing to even consider or adapt to. But Tony doesn’t have that luxury, like his soulmate does. He’s thirteen, his first three or so steps into puberty, and then overnight he has this bond in his head. It’s a tether of...something, something intangible and abstract, but when put into words seems similar-ish to a silvery tether sprouting out of the back of his head to disappear into the aether. Or even a shadow, cast long into the distance.

The feeling of it is just strange. That’s the only word for it. He can’t read the baby’s thoughts or anything, can’t feel what they feel, but it’s an awareness of life. Of consciousness. A soft, opaque light, like morning sun through childhood curtains. 

Tony wonders how he feels to them. Does he feel older? Sharper? Brighter? An overseer, a protector? 

His mom says, “You’re so lucky, Tony. Whoever they are, they’re your soulmate. I’m so happy for you. One day you’ll find them and it’ll be a perfect moment of finding the person you’re perfect for, and the person that’s perfect for you.”

His dad says, “You have to make sure they’re really your soulmate before you settle down. People will try to trick you into thinking they’re your soulmate from here on out. Be smart about it, kid.”

Both of their views seem useless to him. He doesn’t care about having a perfect match and he’s not dumb enough to let someone trick him. They’re not soulmates, his parents—it’s probably why they’re saying the things they are. Tony’s known since he was four. His mom lost hers when she was a kid. His dad had a platonic one, but lost them a long time ago. He doesn’t talk about it. So, Tony goes to Jarvis.

“It’s not quite anything describable, Anthony,” Jarvis says, thoughtfully. He’s sorting mail and documents into piles of priority. Very few are in the _ immediate _category because he’s very good at his job. “My wife is my soulmate. I was the second-born, so I grew up with her mark on me from the start, and her tether in my mind. It’s...warmth. Comfort.”

“When does that start?”

Jarvis looks at him, head tilted. “When you aren’t waiting for it, I think.”

*

Tony grows up. So does his soulmate, the person on the other end of their metaphysical telephone line that’s carried in Tony’s brand. Tony feels their childhood edges fade away as he gets older, the softness on the proverbial fissure he can feel in the very back of his mind. Feeling his soulmate without a connection is like trying to acknowledge that shadow that’s cast behind him; he knows it’s there, lingering, can know its shape and length and contrast, but no matter how far he turns around there’s never anything to see.

The tether gets sturdier, more hale, as time goes on. By the time Tony turns twenty, his soulmate is starting to grasp for him, emotional reach interested but reserved, severe in its contrast to Tony’s mind. Tony shies away from the reaching, extremely uninterested in being hounded by anybody that learns he’s connected to a fucking seven-year-old in his mind. Because that’s their gap. Tony is twenty years old and his soulmate is seven. _ Seven. _

That’s the problem with gaps: when you’re fifty, nobody gives a damn, but when you’re overage and the other one isn’t? _ Yikes_.

And Tony’s in the public eye. The press knows he was born blank, but the details are fuzzy when his brand appeared; there’s a spectrum between when he was five to seventeen, when he accidentally flashed a half of the brand at a party. The rumors that circulate about the older half when there’s a gap like theirs—it gets ugly very, very quickly. So far they’ve let it lie with the assumption their gap is closer to six years rather than thirteen.

Tony doesn’t want to be bothered with it. He lived thirteen years without whoever’s babbling on the other end of the line, so he can go thirteen more without issue. He doesn’t reach back when his soulmate stretches out, feeling for something to grasp, something to bond with. He reflects back, alive—enough to know for certain—but he maintains distance. When they meet, their brands will light up with their colors, and their connection will deepen to what both Tony and they felt in childhood—bonds are stronger in childhood, fade until they meet, something to do with mirror neurons—and then they’ll be good to go. But that’s a lifetime away, as far as Tony is concerned. 

Distance is safe. Distance keeps the ugliness at bay, until it isn’t ugly anymore.

“Come talk to me when you’re eighteen, squirt,” Tony says one day, when he feels his soulmate reach again, his shadow tugging at the hem of his pants. 

It’ll be the last time he feels his soulmate reach for him with anything positive in a long while.

*

Howard and Maria Stark die. 

Tony spirals. He drinks and drinks and _ drinks _and does drugs hard enough to cut glass, barely conscious through most of the blurring days. It’s ugly. It’s painful, behind the numbness of cocaine and liquor. When he’s far gone enough—when the world is quiet enough, the music turned off—he swears he can hear his mom’s voice in the edges of his room. Can see the gleam of her pearls in the glittering ice of his glass.

It’s a night that he’s seen her when he feels something reach for him, in that mirrored place in the back of his head. It’s a sharp feeling, the edges cutting him up; he resists, pulling back—fingers on the razor—but his soulmate pushes and pushes.

Tony isn’t sober. He cries out, pain ricocheting from his head down into his bones and back. He lays down, cognizant enough to put a glass with ice against his temple, trying to ease the tension before he passes out.

Before he sleeps, he swears he hears_ stop it, it hurts _ whispered in the shell of his ear.

*

Tony doesn’t stop.

But he gets better. He quits hard drugs, limits liquor enough so that he remembers more nights than not.

He doesn’t feel his soulmate reach for him again.

*

Tony is twenty-eight (soulmate: fifteen—close, but not close enough) when the New Year rushes in. Tony and a couple hundred of his closest friends ring in 1997 with too much drinking, a party that’s too big, and sex that won’t mean anything come morning. He’s fresh off the high of hiring the fabulous Virginia Potts (_oof_, that name has to go), and still hurtling over the obstacle that is making his dad proud (fuck). It’s been good, all things considered.

And then.

Tony wakes up in the middle of the night after he has a dream of sinking to the bottom of a swimming pool and the whole thing filling up with blood and dirt. He sits up in bed, jostling the people sleeping around him, gasping for air. He’s almost convinced he’s spitting up water before he feels a hand at the small of his back.

He turns. A kind, unfamiliar (hungover) woman looks back at him, sleep in her eyes. “Nightmare?”

Tony is still swallowing around the phantom sensation of water in his lungs. The woman tilts her head sympathetically. 

“Soulmate,” she observes. She’s seen his dark brand, knows they haven’t met. Hers is white, like a scar; she lost hers. “Careful with that.”

Tony pulls away, climbing out of bed and stumbling to the bathroom, where he promptly puts his fingers down his throat and vomits up the rest of the alcohol still in his stomach, hoping for some sense of sobriety. When he’s done, he reaches tentatively towards the place in his head where he once felt his soulmate live, when they were both closer to childhood than not. Then, they could feel each other’s reflections in the mirrors, jumbled, but there; now, it’s harder to feel, harder to quantify. It’s like knowing someone is watching him, his hair standing on end, but never knowing where to look to find the eyes.

His soulmate is sharp at the edges. They’re cutting and heavy and hurting, and it’s so profound and familiar that Tony feels tears jump to his eyes, stinging the corners. Fuck, _ fuck_. 

Someone died tonight. Someone close to his soulmate died in a swimming pool, and Tony felt it, just like his soulmate felt Tony’s parents die and they must have seen a vision of headlights in a dream.

Tony’s too old, too drunk to reach out properly. To...be with them, to comfort. He doesn’t have the strength. But he sits up that night, head against the porcelain of the hotel toilet, counting every second. Just making sure.

It’s not enough. It won’t ever be. He can’t feel what his soulmate feels. Can’t sense the grief. The pain. None of it comes through. He’s reaching for a shadow and somehow expects to feel its skin. His soulmate is awake, somewhere in the world, right in the place Tony was seven years ago, right to the worst night, to the beginning of the most awful era of their life. 

And they’re alone. 

Tony closes his eyes. He tries to be there, tries to remember it all. 

But in the end, it’s never enough.

*

By morning, the intensity of the transcendent, unfeeling, silent grief has shivered and wailed down the cinched tether of their minds into something quieter, softer. Tony can’t feel the exactness of it, can’t feel...much, beyond a dread that originates beyond him, a sink of bright emotions.

By morning, it is ignorable. Tony can sit in the quiet of a morning alone and not hear the shifting of water in the peripherals of his hearing. 

By morning, everything returns to normal. Except Tony is shaken and shivery and feels an immense sense of guilt he immediately buries by taking a shot and chartering a jet to get back home.

*

Nothing changes. Years pass within the status-quo. Stark Industries grows, expands into weapon markets previously untouched. Pepper Potts (much better) keeps Tony in line enough to keep stockholders and Tony content. 

Pepper isn’t his soulmate. They’ve known since day one—it was the reason he hired her, because her brand was white and scarred and that meant her soulmate was dead and gone and that was that. He never asked her about it, just like she never asked about his dark brand.And they—they work, is the thing.

Everything points to the idea that they shouldn’t get along. Their personalities clash and they’re not made for each other and Tony’s reckless and Pepper is so down to earth she’s barely seen the sky. But they work. They fit together. And for a while—for a long, long while, they stay together.

It’s good. Better than good. Tony may have even fallen in love with her, if he’s being perfectly honest. She fits in his edges. Not all of them.

But most.

And so time goes on, simple and blitzy and unchanging. And for a while, Tony is kind of happy.

*

Tony is thirty one when his soulmate turns eighteen. 

Tony knocks on their door, a pleasant reminder. _ It’s time. I’m here. Come find me, my brand is out there, everywhere; come find me, you know who I am. I’m ready now. You must have something that's connected to me on you somewhere. You're the one that can bring us together. _

There is no response.

Tony shrugs the proverbial cold shoulder away and goes back to his life, only a little hurt in the places he doesn’t let anyone see.

*

Tony is thirty-four (soulmate: twenty-one; _ finally, _a real adult), and it’s the new year, a handful past the new millennium. He rings it in with most of New York, drunk and high and covered, inexplicably, in glitter. It’s wonderful. (At least, the parts he can remember are.) He and Pepper aren’t together yet. He finds himself longing for it in a way that he doesn’t want to think about because his soulmate might just be a little shy or under a rock or something and Pepper doesn’t start relationships with taken men.

He wakes up late the next day, still kind of drunk, still kind of high, but having a significantly less wonderful time. He’s in a crowded bed—sticky, glitter-covered, sweaty—and has to pry himself loose from the arms and sticky bodies around him. He stumbles to the en suite bathroom to take a shower, blearily rubbing his hair away from his face as a yawn cracks his mouth wide open.

He has a headache, and a distant, thrumming discomfort on his chest. He rubs at it, absently, as he starts a shower and dunks into the water as soon as it starts to steam. He scrubs away the grime and the sweat of the old year and steps out of the shower pinked and warm and clean.

Tony wipes the mirror clean to examine his face—to check his beard, the stubble that must have grown in—and gets distracted by his phone; he glances down and something bright catches in the mirror in the corner of his eye. He turns and looks and stares.

His brand, the dark and circular brand over his heart—as nonsensical as the day it appeared—is colored. Bronzy hues of gold and bright flecks of bright, toxic green.

For once in his life, Tony Stark is struck dumb. He’s not even thinking. He’s caught, staring, at this colored thing on his chest that he never, ever expected to feel. He—he met his soulmate. They met. They—

Tony turns and just reaches the toilet in time to vomit up a stomach full of acid and liquor.

He doesn’t remember the night before.

*

Tony Stark is thirty-four years old when he meets his soulmate. He’s thirty-four when he got so drunk he can’t remember what they looked like. He’s thirty-four when he realizes he hasn’t been happy at all these past few years—

he’s been _ mad_.

*

The first thing he tries to get is the guest list. Happy promptly bursts that idea when he says, “One of the security guys was taking bribes to let people in. Six-hundred per. We have no idea who was at that party, Mr. Stark.”

“Fuck,” he says. He has JARVIS comb through security footage, but there’s no cameras in the party halls, so no way to track who made contact with Tony throughout the night, and nobody on the block outside looks even the slightest bit familiar.

“_Fuck_,” he says again. That quiet, sure desperation that’s been building in him since he was five and had a blank chest boils up and up and up and then curdles into rage over the coming weeks. Rage at his life, at his soulmate, at his parents, at the paps, at everything that got him here. At everything that made him a Lifetime movie of one of the pairs that meets and loses each other, that can feel their soulmate but never touch them, of the romance or whatever bullshit that people think being separated means.

“Fuck you,” he says, two months after the party, and still no soulmate knocking on Tony’s door. He slams the door in his mind between the place he feels the phantom ghost of thoughts, where the cord between him and his soulmate has sat since he was nearly thirteen, now vibrant and bright and somehow heavier. 

He feels abandoned but won’t ever say it. He feels...he feels _ dirty_, like his soulmate saw him and recoiled and refused to come forward. Tony’s brand is everywhere on the internet. His soulmate doesn’t have the excuse I don’t know who they are. His soulmate saw him and—and—

_ Rejected _him. 

“I don’t need you. You live your life and I’ll live mine. Fuck you. _ Fuck _you.”

It doesn’t feel good. The silence. Tony pushes it away.

*

But Tony sticks to that promise. He throws himself into Stark Industries, designing, parting, fucking, the whole nine yards. He fucks with the lights off so nobody can see the colorful new lines of his brand and ask what the fuck he’s doing.

It works.

It works.

It _ has _to work. 

Tony isn’t backing down. The mental place between them stays firmly shut. He hurls insults and mean emotions at the closed door as though his soulmate could feel them. Angry notes shoved under a door.

Sometimes, he gets them back. Flashes of cockiness, annoyance, fury. Distaste. Tony recoils from these, sometimes visibly. Whoever’s on the other end of his now vibrant tether is as furious--if not more--at Tony as Tony is at them. 

“Perfect person my ass,” Tony says one day, when he feels his soulmate barricade themselves as firmly as Tony has been doing to them. The feeling annoys him as much as he pretends it doesn’t scare him. “I don’t need you. You don’t need me.”

Years pass, like this. Back and forth. Barely feeling more than the barest sensations down their tether, a mutual stopgap. Apparently, Tony Stark’s soulmate is just as stubborn as he is. 

Whatever. Tony doesn’t need them. He doesn’t. He has Pepper and Rhodey and anyone who swings his way. He doesn’t need his soulmate, just like his parents didn’t need theirs. He’s perfectly fine on his own. 

And then Afghanistan happens.

*

Tony Stark is thirty-nine (soulmate: twenty-six) when Afghanistan...well. He wakes up in a cave with a car battery attached to a cylinder in his chest that stops little shreds of metal from ripping up his heart into mince meat. He wakes up to a bandage over his brand and an old man explaining, behind round and kind glasses, “I hid it so they would not know.”

The fear comes from everywhere, all sides closing in. The waterboarding, the implications of his life’s work, the future, the build, the everything. Tony’s constantly afraid. But he’s not...terrified, if there’s even a distinction. He’s sick and guilty and wobbly in his knees and afraid for his life, but he is not desperate with terror. A week after he gets his feet well and truly under him he’s given a computer, a soldering gun, materials, and time. 

That’s all he needs.

But the knowledge that he can get out doesn’t change the fact that he might not. Or that he’s scared. Because he is—scared. 

So some nights he lays awake in his cot and shivers and shivers, staring at the forge, at the hidden pieces of the Suit, and he twists the doorknob of that closed door between his mind and his soulmate, and whispers, _ I don’t need you. I don’t. But if you’re here, it would be really nice to know I have someone in my corner right now. _

Some nights, he swears he can hear _ I’m here _ when he’s just about to fall asleep. But in the morning, the tether is always tightly cinched.

*

And then he gets out. Just like that—one morning and the next. Yinsen dies, and the Suit scatters into pieces, and he’s out.

And then he goes home. 

The first night he spends in the states, he whispers, _ thank you _. He waits for a response, but none comes. After a moment, then two, the tether loosens. The blockade eases. Tension Tony has carried in his chest eases, the arc reactor sitting easier in his artificial sternum. 

His soulmate clasps his mind, gently. A soft thing. No words. Laying a blanket over Tony’s body, warming a cup of cocoa, closing the blinds for a nap. Connection. Gentleness. 

In the morning, the tether is still disconnected. The self-imposed separation still there on both sides, re-erected. But this time, it is less like brick and steel and more like glass; transparent, flimsy, reflective. 

*

Everyone knows the rest. Obie. Palladium poisoning. The Battle of New York. The shitshow that is the Avengers. They avoid catastrophe with the Bucky Barnes situation, but barely.

Through it all, Tony has Pepper. They’re together. They get through it together.

(but there’s always someone else, lingering in the peripheries.)

*

The real shit starts out of nowhere.

First, Tony is forty-six (soulmate: thirty-three, not that he’s counting) when they’re at a fundraiser and Pepper waves away the waiter that pauses in front of them, champagne glasses filled and bubbling on his tray. Tony longingly watches him and the alcohol go but beams at Pepper when she cocks her brow at him.

“Whattya say we ditch,” Tony says, tilting his body towards her so the two or three pairs of eyes that have been following him are dissuaded as to butting into their conversation and bothering him. Fucking politicians. “We’ve showed our faces, done our duty—let’s _ go out, _ Pep.”

Pepper’s smile is as benevolent as it is unmoving. She opens her body language, undoing his subconscious work on their onlookers. “We agreed an hour and a half.”

“That was before I realized it was all the boring congressmen,” Tony doesn’t whine. “I’ve just won the Avengers and S.I. a mile and a half of good will in Chile.”

“Yes, Tony, you did your job,” Pepper responds, amused. She glances across at him, then stops. “Are you feeling alright?”

“I—” Tony grimaces. His heart is racing like he’s falling from the sky beneath the yawning maw of a portal, dizzy like he’s been spun stupid. “I feel—”

He’s struck with stunning and astounding pain, right in his head, then his chest, like he was hit with a fucking missile. He gasps, the breath leaving him, and his hands spasm uselessly as lightning-hot heat races from fingertips to wrists. Pepper feels his hands jerk against her back, where it’s been resting all night; she uses the anchor to steer him into her side and out of view, towards the safety of privacy in the back of the reception hall.

“Tony, talk to me,” she’s urgently whispering, helping him lean against a wall before framing his face with her hands, fingers fluttering over where the arc reactor used to lay. “What’s happening?”

He can barely get his breath out, let alone words; he’s aching and singing with pain all throughout his body, but his hands are spasming and shaking with crushing and bleeding agony. It feels dulled, in a way; sharp in others, but somewhat, distinctly, distant.

“Soul—” he chokes out. He bends at the waist, and Pepper lets him tuck his forehead against her shoulder, hands pressed into the curve of his abdomen; he grimaces and chokes out against her dress, “—soulmate.”

“Shit,” she says, eloquently. Her hand flattens over his heart, where his golden-green brand sits. She tucks herself closer, hiding and comforting him in one. “Okay, deep breaths. Try to find the tether in your mind. If you know that’s where the pain’s coming from, it’ll go away, honey, deep breaths.”

Tony tries. He’s felt where that thing’s sat, heavy and opaque and colorful, in his head for twelve fucking years, since the night they met and never met again. The pain isn’t flowing from that place like a blown cork; it’s flooding his nervous system like it’s his own body, his own personal pain. It almost feels like death.

“Pep,” he grinds out. “Fuck—”

Tony Stark knows pain. Maybe more than most. But this is something else, something transcendent. 

“Shh, Tony, baby,” she whispers. “Take that tether and pinch it. Wrap your fist around it and don’t let go. It’ll stop. It will. Deep, deep breaths.”

Tony reaches. He claws, desperate and dirty through the pain, towards that opaque telephone line in his head. It’s pulsing, open, gaping. His soulmate is in tremendous pain. 

Tony reaches and wraps his hands around the tether. He squeezes. He pinches that connection shut, slams the door, closes the lock, snuffs the fire, however you want to think about it. He shuts his soulmate out. There’s nothing else he can do right now, nothing to make the pain stop. Nothing he can do. Nothing. Nothing.

The pain recedes. His hands throb with sympathetic pain. The pain pounds on the door, lashes on the end of the tether like a rabid dog.

“Let’s go home,” Pepper whispers. She is not his soulmate, but she feels more like his than ever.

*

Second, it _ really _starts when Tony is forty-eight (soulmate: thirty-five; fuck you) and there’s a sudden, splitting pain in his head, a migraine that came to its peak between one second and the next, and even tucking himself away in his workshop with the lights off and a shit ton of painkillers won’t even touch it. He’s queasy and the pain is a snapping, biting thing that beats against the bars and rattles Tony’s teeth.

It’s been going on for over an hour when there’s a sound like sparks, a cutting sound like wrapping paper over sharp scissors, and when he cracks open his eyes he meets the eyes of a random bald guy stood in a circle of orange sparks, with the background of some wood-toned room behind him.

“Mr. Stark?” he says. “I need you to come with me.”

*

Tony stares down at the calm, suspended face of his soulmate, held in some kind of forcefield that’s holding whatever’s crawling around in his head still and silent. The pain in Tony’s head is pounding courteously in sympathy.

“What’s his name again?”

“Stephen Strange,” the sorcerer says. Wong.

Tony stares at him some more. “I’ve never seen this guy before. Ever.”

“Stephen said—once—he met you at a gala,” Wong says. Tony waves him away, distantly.

“I know _ when_,” he says, irritably. “I combed the security footage. I talked to my handlers. His name never came up. He’s a doctor? He must have been on the list somewhere, but he didn’t ping at all…must have been a plus one...”

Wong shrugs in the corner of Tony’s vision. “I don’t know. He just told me you were his, and that you didn’t want to meet him. But he’s—dying, without help.”

Tony doesn’t even begin to know where to unpack that. “He said that? That it was me. What a fucking asshole.”

Wong looks briefly taken aback, but then the surprise fades into some kind of distant amusement. “You really are his soulmate.” He shakes his head, pushes forward. “Mr. Stark—the spell that’s been cast on him is beyond my magic, and if left to fester, it could have repercussions on you. It’s—”

“It’s hurting me because it’s hurting him, yeah, I follow,” Tony says. He wiggles his fingers around as he catches sight of a bunch of pretty nasty scars—both surgical and otherwise—littering Strange’s hands. “I know the deal. But I’m not a carnival magician, buddy. I can’t ferret out what’s in his head.”

Wong says something but Tony isn’t listening. He keeps looking at Strange’s hands. They look really fucking painful; they probably ache like Tony’s sternum does. He cuts across whatever mystical bullshit exposition Wong is talking about to ask, “What happened to his hands?”

Wong blinks. “He—it was a car accident, as far as I understand.”

“Huh,” Tony says. Of course it was. The dash must have reared up and crushed his hands against the steering wheel or the concaving ceiling. A crushing force. Pinned, for hours. Long recovery. Even longer rehabilitation. Career-ending for a doctor.

Wong seems to have realized that he’s missing some fundamental part of the equation going on here. Some reason that’s stopping Tony from falling over himself to help.

“I don’t know a great deal about Stephen’s personal life, but I can…try to alleviate some of the questions you may have,” he offers, awkwardly. He shifts on his feet. Tony can tell he’s anxious of the passing seconds. Strange still and silent in suspension.

“He’s thirteen years younger than me,” Tony says, randomly. It feels important to explain. “I didn’t _ not _want him. I just didn’t want him when he was a kid.”

“Ah,” Wong replies.

Tony looks at Doctor Stephen Strange for a long moment. His brand feels hot. He thinks about Pepper subconsciously rubbing her sternum and looking at someone Tony could never see. He thinks about scarred brands.

“What do I have to do?”

*

It turns out it’s mystical bullshit is what he has to do. The _ what _isn’t even important when it comes down to it. Wong does some magic, Tony does some mental acrobatics, and Strange fights off whatever evil shadow-hand thing that’s crawling around in his head once he has Tony to brace against, and that’s that.

He wakes up a couple hours later, in the bed Wong moved under him (literally; Strange’s red cape seemed to levitate him out of the suspension, and Wong in turn levitated a bed with its blankets pulled back beneath his body). Tony’s just gotten off the phone with Pepper. He can’t get her soft voice out of his head. She never speaks softly.

_ We knew this could happen. _

_ I chose you. _

_ The universe chose him. _

“Morning there,” Tony says. He’s not looking at Strange. Can’t, with Pepper taking up all of his sight.

Strange replies, “Stark.”

They sit in silence. Strange sits up. “I—suppose I have you to thank—”

“I’m married,” Tony interrupts.

A beat. A cautious tone of voice. “I know.”

“We’re talking about kids. Names.”

Another beat. “Congratulations.”

“I’m not poly,” Tony continues. Slashing down options one by one by one, until Strange sees what Tony does. “Can’t swing that. And she came first.” He lets that sit. “You would have been, if you’d come forward that you have my _ fucking _arc reactor on your chest.”

“To be fair—” Strange responds, sharp, almost stilted, almost angry.

“I’m not fair,” Tony interrupts.

“—you didn’t have your reactor then,” Strange continues, ruthless, unwilling to be silenced. “When we met. It would have been as much nonsense to you as it was to me.”

Tony knows. He feels mean. Cornered. “And Wong said you weren’t Sorcerer Nacho Supreme then. Mine wouldn’t have mattered to you, either.”

“Precisely,” Strange agrees, latching onto Tony’s concession with both scarred, shaking hands. “The brands are nonsensical until the soulmates are meant to find each other—”

“It’s biological guesswork,” Tony argues, ever the scientist. There’s a lot of theories of what soulmates are—and what they aren’t—but it has to be something other than we were meant to be.

“Biological guesswork that correctly anticipates important symbols in individuals’ lives that they have yet to discover—some yet to be _ invented _in your case—”

“Science is science even when it feels like magic,” Tony replies, turning on his heel. Strange’s brows are drawn, pinched. His mouth his turned into a distinctly ugly frown. He looks stressed. Pale.

“And magic is magic even if you do not believe in it,” Strange returns, just as hotly.

Tony turns away, hands flexing again. “It doesn’t matter. We’ve got each other’s brands, but that’s it.”

“I understand that perfectly, Mr. Stark. I’ve always known.”

“Now what the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” Stephen snaps, “Ever since I was a child I felt you shy away from me, and you shut me out, and I never once felt you reach for me or have any interest whatsoever in learning who I was. When I realized it was you, you—it made a great deal of sense that you didn’t want me. I had no need of you, either. This incident notwithstanding, I believe I can say, quite happily, we would both prefer to return to our separate lives.”

Tony’s actually shocked that he’s—_ hurt _ by that, somewhere sensitive and deep in his chest. He ruthlessly squashes it down into nothing. “Fine.” He turns on his heal and makes for the door, and stops to leave on last parting bite, “It wasn’t me that didn’t want us, Strange. Between the two of us—don’t even try to say _ I _ was the coward.”

He turns and leaves and doesn’t look back. Walks through the Sanctum, its scars and rusty artifacts and strange moving things, and steps out onto New York’s Bleecker street. Adjusts his coat. Summons a suit and flies home.

Back home, where Pepper is.

*

For all intents and purposes, it should have ended there. They met for real and each found each other lacking, and they parted ways. Back to their separate and disparate lives. That should have been it. It should have been it.

But it isn’t.

Pepper’s quieter now when they lay down in bed and she puts her hand near his brand that sits so colorful and warm; she doesn’t touch it, never has. But now she looks at it and it’s like she can feel the other man that’s wearing Tony’s reactor in this brand’s shadow. Now Tony’s soulmate isn’t just some nebulous _ other_. He’s a he with a face and powers and needs and sharp, _ sharp _words. And that changes stuff.

Tony doesn’t want it to. But it does.

It changes like when the Spiderling gets caught up in something way beyond his league and there’s fucking magic involved, because of course there is, and Tony’s starting to froth at the mouth when he realizes he can’t trace where the kid is and has no idea how to find him. He disappears from surveillance and his suit’s A.I. (_Karen?_ Nice.) isn’t responding to consecutive orders from FRIDAY.

There’s nothing Tony can do. But it’s _ Peter_. It’s him and Aunt May with grief lines around her eyes and fingers that hold too tight into Pete’s shoulders when he explains bruises and cuts away as the products of bullies and it’s too fucking much to think it’s Tony’s fault that she’ll have to grieve another Parker man who stood up for what’s right.

So he doesn’t think about it. He has FRIDAY hack the telecom company and grabs the Bleecker street wifi networks and hacks into the one called _ Stranger Things _ with annoying ease. They’ve got a handful of devices synced up, and he hacks all of them until he finds a phone that’s listening to a Beyoncé playlist on loop.

“Wong,” Tony says, tightly, after he cuts the music and hacks into the microphone. “I need help.”

It’s not hard to ask for help when it’s Pete involved.

There’s a yelp. A pause. And then a sparking portal opens behind him, and Wong gestures him closer, but quiets him before he can get started explaining.

“Not me,” he says. “Stephen is stronger than me. He’s the one you need.”

Tony grinds his teeth even as he takes the steps forward into the Sanctum. Wong leads him through the halls until they find a library-workspace that’s dosed in colors of warm wood-brown and golden hovering light. Strange is seated at a table near the right of the room, nose down in a book; his cape is standing—hovering?—nearby, swaying in a distant, unseen breeze.

Weirdly enough, he looks more vulnerable now than he did laying unconscious in his bed beneath Tony’s gaze.

“Wong, did you find that spellbook I asked you about? I’m making progress—”

“Stephen—” Wong tries to interrupt.

“—the crystal of woi is dangerous out there with Mordo still underground—”

“Strange,” Tony says.

Strange stops. Turns around. He is decidedly less vulnerable than he was; Tony can see the walls building up. “Stark.”

Tony tilts his chin up, tries to hide the shadows under his eyes. Knows he’s failing by the way Strange seems to grow more wary as he takes Tony in. “I don’t care how you feel about me, or us,” Tony bites out, but he tries his best to make it sound courteous. “But I need a favor. Seeing as I saved your life two months ago…”

Strange stands. His amulet—the same shape of Tony’s brand—sits firm and bright in the middle of his chest, a mirror image. His expression is…odd, as far as Tony can tell. He’s guarded. But listening.

“What is it?”

“Magic cult took something of mine. Seems like your kind of party. I need to find them _ yesterday_.”

Strange tilts his head, expression hardening, but also growing amused in other, sharper places. “I’m not a retrieval service, Stark. Just because you and I—”

“It’s a kid,” Tony snaps. Strange stops. “They took my kid.”

“Go on.”

*

It takes Strange and Wong two hours to track down the cult. It’s one that’s been on their peripheries, apparently, but never causing enough of a disruption to warrant personal attention beyond a handful of sorcerers keeping tabs.

Now, they crack down. Between Tony’s willingness to hack anything from the Pentagon to Russian satellites to get information they need and Strange’s dogged determination that has him crashing through dozens and dozens of books from two separate libraries in the Sanctum, they get an astonishing amount of work done without saying something mean.

They find a location. Wong portals them in, and Iron Man unleashes hell. He’s covered by the Sorcerer Supreme at his back, deflecting malicious spells and unweaving protective wards with ease. And they fight.

It’s like they were made to do it.

*

Peter’s okay. Bruised, annoyed, and fascinated with magic. But _ okay_.

*

Tony turns back through the portal between Stark Tower medical and the Sanctum. Strange is stood firmly on his side of the portal, arms crossed behind his back, aching hands tucked away.

“Thanks,” Tony says. Peter chats with his nurse behind him, alive, alive, _ alive_.

Strange tilts his head. “You’re welcome.”

Tony nods, more of a jerk than anything. He turns slightly away, looking back at Peter.

“You care about him,” Strange observes. His tone is not judgmental, but Tony feels his hackles rising anyways.

“What’s your point, Strange?”

“Who is he to you? Your ward?”

Tony snorts. “Ward? What era are you from, dude?”

“I know you don’t have any children. I’m just curious.”

“Curious I could care about something other than tits and the suit?”

Strange blinks at the blanket aggressiveness in Tony’s voice. “No, oddly enough, I don’t think of you that way. I was curious if you had a hand in making him…super, or if you just feel the need to protect him because he’s in harm’s way.”

Tony’s hackles lower, only slightly. “You read everything about me on the Internet, Strange. You don’t know shit about me.”

“I know how you felt at the worst times of your life,” Strange replies. His voice is…softer. But guarded, wary of snapping teeth. “I felt—all of it. Even though we hadn’t met and the tether wasn’t strong—I could feel it all.”

Tony breathes out firmly through his nose. Reaches for humor. Reaches for—fuck, middle ground? “Feel like I should apologize for that.”

Strange shrugs. It’s a strangely delicate motion. “Maybe I should too, for what you must have felt from me.”

It’s…something, to come together like this. To bridge the gap. Weird. But good.

“Didn’t feel much. It was—dulled, on my side,” Tony says. He gestures vaguely towards Strange’s hands. “Well—felt the hands thing. That did suck.” He tilts his head towards Peter’s bed when Strange doesn’t immediately reply, almost caught off-guard. “Right. You know where to find me.”

“Yes,” Strange replies. Tony can almost hear it echoing in Strange’s own ears. “Yes, I do.”

*

Pepper seems to know.

“You look better, Tony,” she says when she sees him that night.

“You know how to flatter me, honey,” he replies.

Pepper smiles. It’s sad at the edges. “You saw him today, right?”

It’s like a punch to his gut. “Pep—”

“No, it’s fine,” she hurries to say, even as her smile grows sadder. “I didn’t even realize how much it was hurting you until I saw you just now and you’re—God, Tony.”

“Pep, I love _ you_,” he entreats. He reaches for her and she lets him take her in and hold her against him.

“I know you do,” she whispers. She runs her fingers through his hair. “I love you too. But this—”

“I don’t care that he’s my soulmate,” he says, fiercely. “He helped me out today but he had every opportunity to come and find me before I had you, before us, before all of this, and he didn’t. And I _ chose _you. That’s important to me. I chose you. I want to keep choosing you.”

Pepper doesn’t reply. She lets him hold her in his arms and lie.

*

It takes Strange a month to contact him after that.

He’s actually civil about it—a phone call, not long after midnight. Tony’s tucked away in his workshop because he knows he’s not getting to sleep anytime soon and he’ll only wake Pepper with his tossing and turning if he’s there, and the rest of the insomniac crew (Natasha and Barnes) will get on his shit if he’s in the common lounge at this hour.

“Mr. Stark,” Strange greets.

“Strange,” Tony replies, sitting back, turning a piece of the suit over in his aching hands. His headache, constant, thrums a little as though falling in sync with Strange’s.

“Your insomnia is impossible to deal with.”

Tony snorts, despite himself. “You don’t have to tell me.” A beat. “You’re a doctor, aren’t you? Aren’t you used to long hours?”

“Not like this,” Strange replies. A beat, this time on his end. “I—hope I’m not…interfering.”

Tony doesn’t know how to reply to that. He feels…interfered with, strangely enough; his heart is beating fast, his exhaustion sloughing off him, headache clearing. He feels better, clearer, just hearing Strange’s voice. But he feels guilty that he feels that way, wondering if Pepper found herself tossing in her sleep.

“No more than you usually do,” Tony settles on.

Silence. Awkward, this time.

“I—” a rushed, exhaled breath. “It was easier, before we met again. Being separated, I mean. Now I can barely get through the day without—”

“I know,” Tony interrupts. He can’t help but make a jab. “What about going about our different lives?”

Another breath, harsher. “Perhaps I was…overeager, to separate us again.”

“Again,” Tony parrots, more to himself than anything. “Right. Look. Nothing has changed since the last time we talked. Pepper and I—”

“I’m not asking you to divorce your wife for me, Stark,” Strange interrupts, annoyed. “But total segregation obviously isn’t working for either of us, since you’re still on the phone with me. We—need some kind of…schedule. Partnership. Or something of that nature that can alleviate these…annoying symptoms of tether strain.”

Mutually beneficial relationship. Tony tilts his head back, eyes briefly closing. He imagines returning to the way things were—when he could sleep, when he wasn’t an emotional mess, when he didn’t have a headache every second of every day. “You have something in mind, doc?”

“I’m willing to offer my support in the Avengers’ work, some cooperation on non-mystical threats. A working relationship seems the best option, in my opinion.”

“Working relationship,” Tony repeats.

Strange pauses. There’s a strange sensation in the tether, something aching, something...longing. Tony can’t tell if it originates in his chest or in Strange’s, or somewhere in between. “Yes. Avengers could visit the Sanctum on certain terms, me and my sorcerers could visit the Tower.”

Tony pinches the bridge of his nose. He can’t stop thinking of Pepper, her fingers, the calm and sorrowful certainty in her eyes the moment he looked at her and said _ his name is Stephen Strange. _ He thinks about slippery slopes and longing and a cruel universe that gives and takes away and gives again when you don’t even want it anymore.

“Yeah,” he says, his mouth moving before his brain knows what it’ll say. Like the tether spoke through him. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

*

They do that. At first, it works. It really, really does. Strange ingratiates himself into the Avengers like he’s always been there; he takes to Cap just about as well as Tony does, and finds a worryingly strong friendship with Natasha. Strangely, he seems to find Barnes fascinating, but keeps his distance as far as Tony can tell. 

(He works out later that the first time the three of them were in a room together, Strange had shaken Barnes’ hand, glanced at Tony, and then subtly retreated. Tony’s good around Barnes, no hard feelings for the parent-murder stuff, but he’s still an assassin that nearly went ape-shit on him in that bunker; there’s some anxiety there that Strange _ must _ have picked up in the tether.)

But it works. It does, and it’s weird, but Tony is peppier, has headaches less, finds that laughter comes easier. Everyone in the Tower notices. Some comment on it. One or two put it together, Tony’s sure. But Strange hanging around the Tower sometimes and having a cellphone he always answers for emergencies (and sometimes late-night chats, but nobody has to know about that) feels good. Guiltily good.

But it’s better. Nobody can complain. Even though Pepper looks at him sometimes with this expression on her face like she’s thinking _ he’s happy again but it’s not because of me. _

Or maybe _ I want him to be like this but I want him to be mine again. _

Or even _ I love him even if that means I can’t have him. _

*

Someone requests access into the workshop when Tony’s in the middle of a fucking _ rush. _He’s got six different amazing ideas bouncing around his head and has to get them out now, but if he doesn’t let Pepper in she’ll just drag him out of here and he really needs just another three or four hours to get this right, and then he can go to sleep or eat dinner (or breakfast?) and surface from this sea of ideas, but not right now—

“I’ve got a _ fantastic _idea right now, babe, it’s got to do with your suit, and I, uh, don’t know what time it is exactly but I promise I’ll make it up to you when I’m done, okay? I got this awesome breakthrough when I was working with this new compound—”

A hand comes down on his shoulder. Tony groans. “Pep, _ please, _I’m begging you—”

He turns around, the hand falling away. Stephen Strange looks back at him, eyebrow cocked.

Tony swallows inadvertently. 

“I thought you were Pepper,” he explains, stupidly.

“Yes, I figured that,” Strange replies, good humor in his voice. He’s subdued, though; he’s not on guard right now, which is really fucking weird. He always is around Tony, even after a handful of months spent in this _ working relationship. _But right now? He’s got a smile tugging at the corner of his lip. A gleam of humor, of understanding, in his eyes.

Tony stands. They’re kind of close together, even after Strange takes a small step back as he does so. “What’s up then? Do you need me? I didn’t hear the alarms go off—”

“No Avengers threats, I can assure you,” Strange replies. “It’s late and you haven’t eaten. I was sent to fetch you.”

“FRIDAY—”

“—asked me to,” Strange completes his sentence for it even really starts. “‘You were in another dimension,’ I believe is the phrase Mr. Barton used. The consensus was you would not hear her.”

“...right,” Tony says. “Uh. Yeah, they’re right. I get into a groove.”

Strange grins a little. “I do the same, when I am studying a text or a spell. It was my best natural talent in medical school.”

Tony is kind of flabbergasted by the lack of guard Strange is displaying right now. He’s...loose, open, almost vulnerable. Their tether is as light and warm as sunlight. It’s warming up Tony’s skin, his abdomen, his cheeks in an intoxicating comfort. This is how it feels? That comfort, the belonging? 

Tony can’t help but smile in return, a rakish grin. “I’m sure that was your only natural talent there, Strange.”

Strange looks at him, head cocked, eyes sharp. “One of a few. As far as I understand, you had quite the many of the same in your youth.”

A snort. “That’s the nicest way I’ve ever been asked if I really fucked around as much as the media said I did, I’ll give you that.”

A delicate shrug, another grin. Tony realizes they’re standing closer than before; who approached who? Did Tony take the two steps that brought him right into Strange’s space, or was it him that came forward, a silent movement? Was it Tony that forgot to continue the conversation after that little lull or was it Strange whose words got stuck or forgotten entirely? Was it Tony whose finger touched Strange’s, or did Strange reach first, a sway of the hand, a single point of skin-on-skin connection? Did Tony tilt his head up or did Strange tilt his down? Did Tony gasp first? Did Strange run his shaking and scarred fingers through Tony’s hair before or after Tony grasped fistfulls of Strange’s clothes? Which one of them pulled back and which one chased for another kiss, another taste, another gasp?

Tony doesn’t remember. It’s a haze, a shower of light, of warmth, of _ finally. _Of a taste he knows but never had. It’s coming home after a long, long time and closing the door behind you. 

It’s also so, so wrong.

The haze doesn’t pass. The warmth doesn’t recede, and the comfort doesn’t lessen. But the comfort he’s come to love over years and years reminds him that this may have been his from the start, it’s not right to take.

He pulls away, and Strange doesn’t chase. They meet each other’s gaze. Strange sways, as though he means to step away, but Tony’s hands involuntarily clench around the handfuls of thick cloth he’s clinging to; he stays put, unwilling to force the separation. His shaking hands smooth through Tony’s hair before falling to Tony’s neck, his shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” Strange says. He sounds it. The good humor gone, paleness and warmth and longing and self-disgust in its place.

“Me too,” Tony replies.

*

Pepper finds Tony. He stands, but before he can say anything, Pepper raises a hand and smiles at him, so sad, so quiet.

“I have something I want to say,” Pepper says. Tony’s heart is pounding, his hands cold, his skin laced with dirt and disgust in himself. He nods, silent, throat stuck around a ball of nails and relief.

“Ever since Doctor Strange came here, you’ve been so much happier, Tony. Happier than I’ve ever known you to be. And I’ve known what we need to do since you found him, but I guess—I think I didn’t...I wanted to be selfish, and keep you. But you’re...you’re so happy, Tony. And I love you so much. I’ve known this could happen from the start, and I know now that even though I love you, I’m not the one you should be with. I’ll always love you, but you need to be with Strange before...well. I know you’ve always been promiscuous as a coping mechanism, but this is different. This is your soulmate. Whatever happens between the two of you is your business, but ever since I lost my soulmate I swore that I would have a marriage that remains faithful.”

Tony swallows. There are tears in his eyes, dangerous things that are all relief and grief and hatred and pain in one. 

“I tried, Pep,” he says. He clenches his fists. “I _ tried. _I want you, I want—I want the family we dreamed about. I want it so bad. But then I’m in a room with him and I—I—”

“Shh, I know, Tony,” Pepper whispers, and kneels down in front of him where he’s sitting on their bed and takes his hands in hers. “It’s not your fault. The tether doesn’t give you control. Please, love, don’t blame yourself; whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault. You’re perfect for him and he’s perfect for you, and there’s no resisting perfection, I know that. I love you. I love you _ so much. _You deserve to be happy and have that perfect thing. And that’s why it’s my responsibility to let you have it.”

“Pep—” God, he sounds _ wounded, _like he’s dying, like his heart has stopped pumping and his blood is poison in his veins and his throat. 

“I’m letting you go because I love you, Tony. Okay? You don’t need to feel guilty. I’m happy that you found this, that you get to have this. You deserve it after all these years waiting. I had it for eight months. Those months, how they felt, how they changed me—they’re why I can do this.”

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers.

“Me too.”

Pepper lets him embrace her, lets him cry. Lets herself cry. It’s the burying and the wake and the grieving of a thing they’ve shared for decades now, of a life spent together but never perfect. In a different world they’d have stayed together. In a different world maybe they never would have met at all.

In the end, all roads in the world they live in now lead back to Stephen Strange.

*

Tony is fifty (soulmate: thirty-seven) when his marriage is annulled, turned to dust like it never existed in the first place. It’s a somber affair—less tears, no less grief—when they sign it away in nonexistence under the Soulmate First law’s eyes. 

Pepper gives him a hug outside of the lawyer’s office, long and lingering. She’s wearing the perfume he got her for her birthday, floral and sharp, a rose’s thorn. He holds onto her for a long time. When they part, they smile at each other; sad, soft, longing, but thankful. Painful and relieved the worst of the pain is done with. The healing can start. Hopefully. 

_ I’ll be okay. I’m still your CEO. _

_ I’m always here for you. _

_ I know. I’m here for you too. _

They take a car back to the Tower. She goes to the Stark floors; he goes to the Avengers floors. Nobody says a thing when he floats through the common lounge, unknotting his tie, blood on his lip where he’s been biting the skin, eyes unfocused.

Of all people, Barnes stops him at the elevator. His eyes are serious, dark. 

“You’re the ambassador, then?” Tony asks. His voice is quieter than normal, but has the lifelong sheen of a porcelain mask overtop, hiding the emotions beneath. “Thought it would have been Nat.”

“They said to give you time,” Barnes agrees. He shifts. “I know I don’t—have a place, to say anything to you. But I wanted to. Because—” 

Barnes grimaces. He rolls his shoulder; the mechanical one, hidden beneath a long-sleeve shirt. He speaks next without preamble, like firing a gun: get it out and over with. “Steve’s mine.”

Tony blinks wildly. “I thought—Aunt Peggy—?”

“I’m not his.”

“...oh.”

“Even back in the forties, unrequited soulmates were around. I never told him. He found his. I—well. I wanted to tell you because you’re basically Ms. Potts’ Steve, if that makes sense. And she got to be with you for a long time. If I’d had that with Stevie, even knowing I had to let him go—”

Barnes shakes his head. He’s gripping the shoulder of his mechanical arm. Tony can almost imagine a brand in the shape of a star and shield there, imprinted right on the bicep, colored but unreturned.

“She got to have you. That’s good enough for folks like us. It ain’t your fault no more than it’s Steve’s fault. You didn’t choose to have a soulmate, but you’ve got one, and that’s that. I just know she what she’s goin’ through right now, and not for one second is she gonna be mad or upset at you.”

Barnes takes a deep breath and meets Tony’s eyes for a second, then two. “Be happy. She might not be able to say it right now, but she wants it for you. She’ll be okay when you’re okay. Not right away—but soon.”

Tony looks at him. The elevator is open in front of him, held in suspension, waiting. He feels some quiet weight lift from his chest, just barely, a shift from the inescapable sensation of drowning in the grief and the unfairness and the pain. 

“Thank you, James,” he says, slowly, quietly, meeting his eyes. Tony gets in the elevator, and when he turns around, Barnes is gone.

* 

He finds Strange a week later, after things have settled. He’s gone out for coffee in casual clothes, the amulet hidden beneath a hoodie. He looks so different without the layered wool and cloak and tied-leather boots. His hands are the same.

Strange looks up at him, face not quite guarded, but not quite vulnerable. He puts his cup down, quietly clattering against the wood, as Tony sits down across from him.

They sit in silence for a while, watching the world turn around them: people walking their dogs, with their spouses, their kids; cars wandering by, people on their phones, on skateboards, on bikes. After a while, Tony clears his throat and speaks without looking away from the passing, oblivious world.

“I was thirteen when you were born,” he explains, softly. “I was in the public eye even then. If I connected to you, if I let you find me early—I would have been an adult with a seven or eight year old as a romantic soulmate. It would have been a fucking witchhunt. I was—well, I thought I was protecting us, but maybe just myself. I didn’t think how it would look to you, you know, being ignored from the get-go.”

Strange takes that in, sits on it. He responds after a while, just as quietly, just as thoughtful. “I tagged along with a mentor of mine to get into that gala, where we met. You flirted with me the second you saw me. We—got handsy. I was, God, twenty? Twenty-one? I didn’t know it was you, right then. The reactor didn’t mean anything to me, you didn’t have it yet. When I woke up the next morning, my brand was so blue and bright. I didn’t know it was you right then either, but once you came back from Afghanistan, once Iron Man happened, I...I thought we were unrequited.”

Tony turns, looks at him. Strange is looking at his coffee, stirring it with a slow, counterclockwise turn. “The tether was still locked, even when you contacted me through it in Afghanistan. I’ve read tethers of unrequited soulmates can still be rather strong, especially in the case of severe trauma. And I researched your brand and it didn’t mean anything to me. And then you were with Ms. Potts, marrying her, I…”

Strange shrugs. He looks up, an odd look in his eyes. A _ what can you do _expression. 

“I got angry. Much like you did, I imagine.”

“I thought you rejected me,” Tony admits. It’s so easy to let the words out. “That you knew it was me and didn’t want me.”

“I always wanted you,” Strange replies. It comes so easily, so assuredly. “I was so grateful I was the second born, that I didn’t have to wait for you. I wasn’t sure why you weren’t talking to me, but my sister said sometimes boys are silly and get mad at each other for no reason, but when we got older it would be better and you would talk to me when I wasn’t a kid anymore. But then it just...didn’t happen. I never considered the gap was as large as it is.”

“Your sister,” Tony repeats.

Strange looks at him for a long moment. He nods. “I was fifteen. I...I didn’t know she hadn’t followed me out of the pool. She was only alone for three minutes.”

Tony nods. Lets it sit for a moment. There’s no words for it, not now. “I was twenty-one. My parents were run off the road, assassinated for the super soldier serum in the trunk. I thought my dad had been drunk and killed my mom accidentally for years.”

Strange nods in turn, and lets it sit, too. They both experienced the other’s loss, both sat through it all that time ago. Now it’s an acknowledgment that they survived. They watch the world turn on and on for a while now, letting all the years and the pain and the misunderstandings settle back down and into something close to a foundation for something new.

Something good.


End file.
